


You've Got A Friend In Me

by twerkinshield



Series: Of Winter Winds, Past Sins, and Dearest Kin [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: M/M, Prank Wars, Prosthetic arm throwing, Therapy, in which Bucky knits and bonds with the team, terrible puns about hands and arms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-01
Updated: 2014-05-01
Packaged: 2018-01-21 11:11:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,682
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1548503
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/twerkinshield/pseuds/twerkinshield
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Steve is fed up with the antics of the Avengers, epic prank wars are waged, scarves are knitted, and Bucky throws his metal arm at people.</p>
            </blockquote>





	You've Got A Friend In Me

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to my lovely beta Sarah (somethingfishyinspace on tumblr) who did such an excellent job catching all grammatical fuck ups and who helped me curb my gratuitous use of run-on sentences! :D
> 
> Based on this post I made a while back (http://twerkinshield.tumblr.com/post/82533202769/steve-and-bucky-being-in-a-meeting-with-all-the)

Steve pinches the bridge of his nose, feeling the headache creeping up behind his eyes, and briefly contemplates the bloody murders of his teammates. The Avengers are supposed to be a beacon of light and a paragon of justice, but in reality they’re just a bunch of jumped up superheroes with angst-filled backstories and egos the size of North America. It’s a bit understandable that there would be more than a bit of uncomfortable friction between them all.

Not to mention the difficulties and tense atmosphere brought on by inviting the newly rehabilitated Bucky to live in the Avengers tower. Countless rounds of intensive psychotherapy and going to weekly counselling sessions with Sam and Steve have given the ex-soviet soldier a new outlook on life, even if he doesn’t feel 100% comfortable living with Steve’s shiny new friends. Bucky tends to stay out of the melee of meetings and team briefings that are brought to the tower, given the tenseness of the atmosphere and the plethora of daily triggers that bring out the automatic fight-or-flight responses of the late Winter Soldier. Steve warily swings his gaze back over to the bar in the corner of the Avengers’ common room to see how Bucky is doing, tucked away into one of the sitting nooks with a tumbler of whiskey in hand and flipping through an enormous Russian tome.

“Tony I _said_ no more explosives and I _meant_ it,” Bruce growls.

The billionaire pouts, dramatically crossing his arms over his chest like a petulant child denied sweets before dinner, and says, “I don’t see why I can’t upgrade the tower to have movement activated booby traps.”

Clint snorts from his perch on the top of the bookshelf, “Stark, do you remember the incident with the toaster from hell?”

“That was an accident,” Tony waves a hand dismissively. “I never meant for it to develop a sentient mind like JARVIS.”

“But you _did_ mean for it to have weaponized capabilities sir,” JARVIS adds smoothly.

Tony scowls up at the ceiling, “Traitor.”

Steve tries to rally the troops, “We’re getting off topic here and I – “

“Tony I don’t want to have to taser the goddamn toaster if I want to have breakfast,” Natasha growls.

“I do not understand,” says Thor, his brows drawing together confusedly. “I thought the toaster was meant to char your bread? And does it not perform the task admirably?”

Bruce sighs, “technically yes, but we’d prefer to have our food prepared _without_ a grandiose battle for it.”

“Oh, well could Tony not just leave it be then?”

“That’s what I’ve been saying!” Clint crows.

“You guys are all ganging up on me!” Tony cries, mock offended. “Cap the other kids aren’t playing nice and they’re being mean to me!”

Steve sighs explosively, letting all the air out in a burst of white-hot frustration. It’s like trying to herd cats, frustrating and damn near impossible.

So he turns to the one person capable of helping him.

“Bucky come on, help me out!”

Bucky just lifts his glass in a mock salute, not even lifting his eyes away from his book, “No way Steve-o, don’t drag me into this.”

Steve manfully restrains himself from stomping his foot like a child, “Oh come _on_ Buck! You’re a member of the team, just give me a hand!”

Now, over the past many months, Steve has gotten used to the quirks and strange habits of the Winter Soldier as a separate entity inside his best friend. He’s gotten used to the placement of furniture in Bucky’s room (optimized for a clean exit out the window and for the best unimpeded access to the door), the way he avoids using the popcorn machine because it sounds like gunfire, the mass of pillows on Bucky’s bed to help with the sleepless nights full of nightmares, and the unquenchable thirst for knowledge of all the time he spent in cryo. Steve knows what kind of stance Bucky gets into when he’s feeling threatened and cornered (knows the glazed-over look he gets in his sky-blue eyes whenever a new memory resurfaces from the depths of his subconscious, and he understands firsthand the soldier’s posture that he adopts whenever he walks through a military compound.)

But the look of sly amusement crinkling his eyes is pure Bucky.

Steve sighs once more, and turns back to the table of bickering superheroes… only to jump back a step in surprise when Bucky’s metal arm comes crashing down to land right in the middle of the large conference table, disrupting the floor plans and coffee mugs littered on the table. Everyone falls silent as they look at the prosthetic arm sitting there, the silver alloy gleaming brilliantly under the mid-afternoon sunlight cascading through the massive open windows.

Steve glares at him, “Bucky.”

Bucky smirks insolently, “Steve.”

The serious moment is broken when Tony bursts into peals of delighted laughter, his head thrown back and his smile splitting his handsome face.

“Oh my _god_ Cap!” he gasps for breath, his chest heaving. “You should’ve seen your _face_!”

And with that, the entire team breaks out in raucous laughter, killing the last of Steve’s dwindling hope of ever regaining some semblance of professional countenance. Steve shakes his head and silently shakes with laughter at the arm sitting innocently in the center of the table.

“Bucky that was _terrible_ ,” Steve wheezes. “Nice to know that your jokes haven’t improved in the last seventy years.”

Bucky just shrugs, inordinately pleased at being responsible for the break in the tense atmosphere, “Well I was just following your orders to a T there boss man.”

Steve narrows his eyes, sensing the impending barrage of bad humour.

“ _No_.”

“I guess you could say I’m – “

“ _Don’t you fucking dare_ – “

“– a handyman.”

Behind Steve, Clint and Bruce are clutching their sides and turning purple from laughing.

“I could give you some _handy_ tips on leadership,” Bucky sips his drink, hiding his toothy grin. “Maybe a _hands_ -on demonstration.”

Tony wheezes incoherently.

“Bucky _no_ – “

“What? You really need to get a _grip_ on this whole captain thing Stevie.”

“Please stop – “

“Does anyone else have any ideas? Some advice for the captain?” Bucky looks around the group, the picture of innocence. “I’ve already given him a hand but maybe someone else could contribute.”

Natasha snorts coffee out of her nose.

“I do not have any ideas that Steve does not already know of,” says Thor, big and earnest and smiling brightly.

Bucky hums thoughtfully, “Yeah well, this is a first _hand_ job, so we’ll have to try our best.”

Clint nearly falls off the bookshelf he’s laughing so hard.

“Bucky! Please for the love of god _stop_!” Steve begs, gasping through his laughter.

“No more ideas? Yeah me too,” Bucky’s says, brows furrowing in mock seriousness. “I’m _stumped_.”

“ _Bucky_.”

Bucky looks around the room, gleefully taking in the various states of dishevelment and ruin of his teammates brought about by his terrible sense of humour.

“Steve are you actually picking on the hand-putee?”

Steve doubles over laughing, with tears streaming down his face.

“Bucky,” Steve wheezes. “You’re a terrible person. Never _ever_ change.”

Bucky’s smile is even more stunning than the late autumn sun streaming in through the windows.

 

\-------------------------------------------------------

 

After what becomes affectionately known as the “detachable arm debacle”, Bucky starts to really warm up to everyone in the tower. He goes for early morning runs with Steve and Sam, makes breakfast with Natasha, tries meditating with Bruce, takes archery lessons from Clint, he even tries asking Thor about what Asgard is like. Oddly enough, he doesn’t regret it in the slightest when Thor smiles earnestly at him and proceeds to regale him with glorious tales of the Golden Realm of old, spending almost three hours sitting in front of the fireplace with mugs of hot apple cider to keep them company.

There are still good days and bad days, days when Bucky feels guilty and broken and distant, and a cold seeps into his bones like nothing the warm autumn sun will ever chase away. Sam suggests he take up knitting, and after Bucky scoffs at him, shows him the star spangled toque that he knitted for Steve a few weeks earlier. Bucky only takes it up after nearly a week of nightmares and sleepless nights, too exhausted to stay up watching television but too terrified to go to sleep. So he picks up the book of patterns left behind by Sam, and starts out with a soft, powder blue wool scarf. The going is slow and the stitches are uneven, with odd little lumpy patches, but he sleeps like a baby once it’s finished. Steve ends up wearing the scarf absolutely everywhere he can, and flat-out refuses to let anyone else wear it. Bucky then takes a trip with Sam to the nearest craft store to pick out different coloured wool for each of the Avengers, and shortly thereafter, the entire team has either a new pair of mittens or a long scarf to keep them warm in the chilly weather.

Bucky cheekily picks out a vibrantly neon pink wool for Thor’s mittens and is pleasantly taken aback when the Asgardian enthusiastically accepts the gift with a loud cry and a bone crushing hug. It isn’t even a week later when he gets a handwritten letter (“an actual letter Steve! No one writes these anymore!”) in the mail from Jane – working on a project up in the frigid temperatures of Alaska – praising his needlework and asking if he’d please, please, _please_ make her a pair? Maybe in orange? Bucky goes all out and knits the scientist a pair of gloves with a Velcro flap near the fingers so she can use her fiddly science equipment in the cold weather without taking her gloves off. It’s all worth the hassle of using the post office when he gets a package in the mail two weeks later, containing a necklace made of a crystalized fossil, and a long thank-you letter from Jane gushing about everything from the mittens, to the weather, to how her research is going. They end up exchanging letters and care packages to each other on a regular basis, with Thor adding little trinkets of his own from Asgard to send to his beloved.

Tony ribs Bucky much like Howard used to, all sharp humour and bad puns, the two getting along like a house on fire until one day Bucky goes too far and remarks on how much like Howard Tony is. He realizes his mistake only after Tony freezes at his workbench, his breaths coming in short and shallow and his eyes widening in panic. He promptly flees into his private workshop without a word. Bucky realizes what he said wasn’t a compliment after he seeks out JARVIS, and asks about what Howard was like after the war. Between the emotional neglect, the drinking, and the demand for perfection, Howard Stark did not win any father of the year awards. Apparently, losing a dear friend to a Hydra plane crashing into the ice changes a man. He seeks out Tony later and sits outside the locked door, after failing to hijack the keypad, and waits for hours for the engineer to reappear. Pepper finally takes pity on him when she finds Bucky curled up against the door and gives him her passcode to let him in. He brings some sandwiches and a banana-strawberry smoothie to Tony, and tells him he’s ten times the man his father ever was. He knows they’ll be okay after Tony eats a sandwich and splits the smoothie with him. After that, Tony is the only person that Bucky lets anywhere near his metal arm for maintenance, even if he installs a built-in mp3 player in Bucky’s shoulder.

 Clint and Natasha are another story entirely. Where Natasha is all cool detachment and calculating smirks, Clint is a firecracker trapped in an enigma and wrapped in a burrito. Clint is the one who convinces Bucky to get a twitter account and then a snapchat, and he gets quite the following. Bucky starts off posting inspirational quotes and pretty pictures and then is surprised at the outpouring of support and encouragement he gets from people who know all he’s gone through over the years. He gets links to nice recipes, well wishes, offers of support groups, music recommendations, and even the occasional dirty joke. He’s baffled but charmed by how everyone seems to delight in his wit and confusion about the 21st century. Bucky’s most memorable tweet is a picture of himself looking sceptically at one of Tony’s evil toasters from hell with the caption, “I don’t trust microwaves.” Followed immediately by, “WAIT I HECKED UP THAT’S NOT THE RIGHT APPLIANCE.” He gains another five hundred followers and a few promotional offers from various appliance companies. He snapchats with Clint and sends him stupid selfies. Clint sends him inappropriately timed pictures taken in the middle of super secret missions with captions like, “me on my way to steal yo gurl” and “u been hit by a smooth criminal”. Natasha decides to introduce them to Vine and Parkour at the same time, culminating in a series of videos with increasingly alarming stunts that pull in a ridiculous amount of followers to Bucky’s twitter.

Natasha is the only one who understands the clutter and darkness of Bucky’s mind sometimes, courtesy of her time in the Red Room. When he screams himself awake at night, she is the first one there to calm him down, holding a hand to his face and whispering into his ear in soft Russian. On his bad days, she makes sure he’s as comfortable as can be with as little stimuli as possible. From warm blankets and lemon tea, to quiet jazz music, and making sure his knitting bag is always full of wool. Natasha doesn’t look down on him, and neither does she coddle him. She just knows exactly what he needs, precisely when he needs it. On good days, when she isn’t away on a mission, she’s always open to a good sparring session in the gym. Working out different fighting patterns and carefully figuring out what things trigger his Winter Soldier outbursts.

Bruce is the person that Bucky relates the most to. He’s quiet and calm, reserved and intelligent, with a wicked sense of humour if he’s feeling safe and comfortable. He teaches Bucky some meditation techniques and how to understand what triggers him and how to deal with it. It’s nice. Having someone who treats him like a normal person with normal issues, rather than a psychopathic ex-soviet killing machine with multiple personality disorder. Bruce understands what it’s like to have another person lurking just under your skin, lying in wait in the deepest, darkest corners of your mind. He helps Bucky see what _he_ has done, and what _the other guy_ has done, and it does wonders for Bucky’s self-worth. Together they figure out ways to deal with their issues and they lean on one another when times get tough. Bruce teaches Bucky how to cook healthy meals and he teaches Bruce some basic self-defence moves, never aggressive, always defensive. Bruce is the calm voice of reason in the middle of a storm of constant chaos and is easily the best listener that Bucky has ever met.

Steve is a whole other barrel of monkeys.

Steve knows who Bucky is on a fundamental level and absolutely refuses to let him wallow in self-loathing. So they go for long walks in Central Park to talk for hours about growing up together in Brooklyn, even taking the subway to their old neighbourhood to see their old apartment before the war, now turned into a tiny little coffeeshop. Bucky teaches Steve how to knit and flushes warmly when Steve presents him with his very own matching pair of mittens and a scarf. Whenever Bucky feels his grip on reality slipping, he puts on his mittens and wraps the scarf around his head to remember what to hold onto. On the bad nights when he can’t sleep, Steve will slip into his room and slide under the covers to cuddle against him while Bucky knits, throwing an arm possessively over Bucky’s slim hips and snoring away while a scarf or hat slowly takes shape. He asks Steve why no one goes for a night of dancing like they used to.

“Trust me Bucky, that’s gone the way of the dodo bird.”

“But why? We used to have a grand ol’ time taking the dames out for a night on the town!”

“No, no, no! I just mean that the dancing is different.”

“Oh. I see.” But he doesn’t see.

So Steve takes him out to one of the trendy downtown nightclubs, after carefully outlining the escape routes and possible triggers for Bucky, and neither of them are surprised when Bucky has to leave after only ten minutes there because the combination of flashy lights and smoky air make him feel like he’s back on the battlefield. By a stroke of luck they end up finding a retro bar that’s featuring an oldies night, and they dance until the sun comes up. Only to stumble home in the wee hours of the morning to fall exhausted into bed. They go to an old arcade near the docks and use up all their quarters to play the old games, and when Tony gets wind of this, ends up buying a couple of machines for their rec room.

A week after their night of dancing, Tony vetoes Steve’s movie choice on the weekend movie night (“for the love of god Steve I refuse to watch _Old Yeller_ again”) and thus, Bucky is given the choice. The squeal that Bucky lets out (“that was totally manly Steve shut up oh for god’s sake Steve _stop fucking laughing_ ”) when he sees the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy sitting pretty right beside the Hobbit box set is pretty indicative of his joy. And so, they embark on a quest that leaves Bucky sitting barely three feet from the screen with his eyes glued to the epic battles, intrigue, and witty banter of the various races of Middle Earth. The team crawls out of the rec room a full twenty-four hours later after marathoning the entirety of Tolkien’s work. Bucky ends up watching the films over and over until Steve introduces him to the plethora of Disney movies.

 

\-------------------------------------------------------

 

Surprisingly, Bucky is the one who asks if they can go to Coney Island for the day. So on a Saturday when the entire team is free, they all pile into the subway (“no Tony we are not taking a limo to Coney Island.” “But _why_ Steve?”) and head on over. Bucky shrinks back into his seat, as a little boy across the aisle stares at his metal arm curiously. Steve nudges him gently and anchors him.

Until a small boy notices them from across the aisle, “Hey mister?”

Bucky starts, “Yeah?”

“Why do you have a space arm?”

Bucky ignores Tony snorting into his coffee, “Well I lost my real arm a while ago, so I needed a new one.”

“Woah!” gushes the boy, eyes wide and sparkling. “That’s _so_ cool! Can I see it? Does it shoot lasers?”

“Noah!” his mother admonishes, embarrassed. “Leave the poor man alone!”

“No, no, it’s all right,” Bucky smiles softly, and shrugs out of his jacket. “I lost the whole arm so it’s attached at the shoulder.”

Noah comes and sits right beside Bucky, and gently runs his fingers down the cool metal of his fingers as Bucky explains how Tony Stark made it.

“The _real_ Tony Stark? Iron Man made your arm?”

“Yep,” Bucky points to Tony lurking nearby. “See that guy over there with the beard that looks like a nerd?”

Noah nods.

“That’s him.”

Tony snorts, “Bucky is just jealous that I’m Iron Man and he’s only part iron.”

“Well I think it’s cool that Tony Stark’s friend has an arm like my leg!” the boy pulls up the right leg of his jeans to reveal the prosthetic. “We match!”

Noah giggles and waves goodbye as his mother gently tugs him off the train.

“Aw, that’s so sweet!” Tony coos, completely ruining the moment. “Kids love Mr. sad trash robo-hobo!”

Steve turns purple trying not to laugh at Bucky’s supremely offended face.

They get to Coney Island and Bucky’s memories rush back in a flood of warmth, tingling down his spine like a spark of electricity. He remembers the old cotton candy stand run by Mr. Jenkins, the terrible hot dog they would share after pooling their money together, and he’s delighted when he sees the roller coaster that Steve puked on as a kid.

He turns to Steve and grins maniacally.

“Dude no.”

“Dude _yes_.”

“This won’t end well Bucky,” Steve frowns, looking distinctly green around the gills.

Bucky sighs dramatically, “Well if you _really_ loved me…”

Steve faux glares at him, “I’ll show _you_ love when I puke it all up on you.”

“Now, now kids,” interrupts Natasha, smirking slyly. “Keep the flirting to a minimum and make sure to use protection.” And without further ado, she drags Clint and Thor away to the shooting booths.

Tony ends up grabbing Bruce and Sam to trail along with Steve and Bucky, and films their faces the entire ride on the roller coaster, laughing so hard that Steve’s girlish screams are barely heard. True to his word, Steve at least has the presence of mind to lean over to puke on Bucky, and their final descent leaves Bruce and Sam in stitches. Tony buys them both clean t-shirts from a vendor (“Why do these have Iron Man on them?” “What? They’re cute!” “It’s weird having your face on my body.” “That’s what she said!” “ _Tony_.”) Bucky keeps the t-shirt and cherishes it and the warm memories of friends and food and love.

Being back at their childhood haunt brings Steve and Bucky out of their normally reserved shells, and they’re soon shooting the shit and running their mouths at each other without a care in the world. Swearing and sassing and acting like carefree children, Bucky hasn’t felt this unburdened since before the war.

“Wow Buck,” Steve whistles, as Bucky aims for the highest rungs on the hoop tossing game. “That was pretty smart.”

“Thanks,” Bucky grins. “Sweet talkin’ me won’t get you my prize though.”

“Well I guess all the stupid must’ve grown out in your long luxurious locks,” Steve smirks.

“You might not know this Stevie,” Bucky’s ring lands on the bottle, earning him a massive stuffed giraffe. “But there’s this saying these days that might be really useful for you to know. You know what that is?”

Steve shrugs, the picture of innocence, “get a haircut you sad trash robo hobo?”

Bucky smiles blindingly, “go fuck yourself.”

Steve just smiles winningly at him and hands him another five dollars to play again, taking the giraffe to hold for Bucky.

Sam just shakes his head, laughing, “We’ve read and studied about you guys in history books. You are _national_ heroes. What even are you? Bitchy teenagers?”

Bucky doesn’t remember having so much fun in years.

They leave the park after the lights go out and carry their prizes onto the subway, cramming themselves in and waving cotton candy-sticky hands at each other as they regale the team of their day’s exploits. As Bucky leans sleepily against Steve on the subway, standing up with his face tucked safely into the warm crook of the super soldier’s neck, he breathes in the clean smell of soap and cologne and smiles. The stuffed giraffe ends up in Bucky’s bed wearing a hand-knitted Captain America sweater.

 

\-------------------------------------------------------

 

Bucky has been at the Avengers’ tower for six months when Clint decides to start the most epic prank war that the team has seen since its inception. He starts it off by taking on the monumental task of moving every piece of furniture in the building exactly six inches to the left of where it was. His efforts are rewarded when Tony falls off the sofa; Natasha drops her coffee onto the carpet, and Steve trips headlong into a cabinet full of expensive liquor. Tony yells at Clint for destroying his precious alcohol and Bucky snickers from the breakfast nook.

Tony makes his move next. Clint gets the full brunt of the attack, even though technically Steve was the one to break stuff, and the engineer removes all the arrowheads from every single one of Clint’s stash to replace them with firecrackers. What he doesn’t do is tell the rest of the team. Understandably, the next time they’re all training in the gym and Clint looses an arrow chaos erupts. Bucky thinks they’re under attack and tackles Steve and Sam to the ground to cover them, Natasha nearly gets her face blown off by a bright green whizzpopper, and Bruce hulks out in surprise and demolishes the workout equipment. Thor is the only one who is delighted by the turn of events and praises Tony for his ingenuity.

Bruce and Natasha employ more subtle means of attack. Tony goes to make coffee in his lab one morning, only to run screaming to the kitchen for milk after he realizes that the coffee grounds are liberally interspersed with ground up chilli flakes. The milk ends up being one of Bruce’s science experiments conveniently gone wrong and Tony spends the next few hours hugging the porcelain god.

Thor proves to be the most deadly of pranksters, probably courtesy of his megalomaniacal brother, and buys sugarless Haribo Gummy Bears for snack during the weekly team meeting. Within the hour, after nearly a pound of gummy bears each, every single member of the team is locked into their respective bathrooms trying not to eject their internal organs through their anuses. Bucky reminds himself to never _ever_ to get on the Asgardian’s bad side. Thor just smiles sunnily and explains the situation to Pepper, who laughs herself sick and kisses him on the cheek.

Steve fears for the day when Bucky enters the prank war for real, dreading the creativity of his colourful mind. One morning, after a bad night turned good, Bucky wanders down to the kitchen with Steve following sleepily behind him. He checks the integrity of the coffee grounds before filling the pot, and feels Steve wrap his arms around him from behind, nuzzling tiredly into the soft hairs at the base of Bucky’s neck.

“Well I guess winter is coming,” Tony smirks. “Or maybe it already _came_.”

Bucky draws a blank at that, “what?”

Steve just mumbles into his skin, still half-asleep, “pop culture reference. Television program. The one with the dragons and incest.”

Bucky raises an eyebrow at the admission, and then smiles angelically.

Tony shudders, “oh dear god _please_ don’t smile like that it creeps me the hell out.”

Bucky resents the fact that none of the pranks have been directed at him, probably out of fear for triggering him or knocking him back a few steps in his recovery. Understandable, but annoying. So Bucky gets to work on finding pranks that will stump even a team of superheroes. He rigs Tony’s expensive Keurig machine to explode and spit out coffee whenever someone uses it. After Tony fixes it, completely drenched in lukewarm coffee, Bucky takes the distraction as an opportunity to remove all the doorknobs in the tower. Bruce gets locked in his lab and Thor ends up stuck in his bathroom. Natasha is cleverer and escapes the gym using the air ducts running through the building. Bucky uses the distraction of weaponized mechanical bugs in Manhattan to replace everyone’s toothpaste with foot cream, and delights in the screams of disgust that ring through the tower at various points in the evening.

It’s only once everyone realizes that the culprit is Bucky that the tables turn. Steve steps up to the plate admirably and uses the only true weapon that can bring Bucky down: fashion. So he gets Tony to help him design a Bucky themed t-shirt. Since the Avengers all have one of their own from various clothing lines it seems unfair to leave Bucky out of the fun, and they send the design off to the manufacturers without further ado. A week later the shirts show up, colour coded to each Avenger with Bucky’s name and a large star underneath. They all wait until Bucky is out at his mandatory weekly therapy session so they can bring out the markers, paint, and glitter. When he gets back from the SHIELD headquarters, Bucky chokes on nothing and turns a brilliant shade of scarlet at the team of superheroes waltzing around the tower wearing his name with gaudy decorations on their chests. Tony starts up a joke page on the Stark Industries website to sell the rest of the shirts and is pleasantly surprised when they sell out in under an hour. He donates all the proceeds to an organization for war vets with PTSD and drags the entire team out for a promotional photo-shoot with their bedazzled t-shirts. Bucky stands there turning a mottled red with mortification in the middle of the group photo as the cameras click and flash merrily. Steve even frames a photo above the bed in his room. Bastard.

 

\-------------------------------------------------------

 

The prank war ends when Sam finds Bucky frantically searching the tower for his stuffed giraffe, getting progressively more distressed and anxious as Steve helps him look for it. Sam storms into the kitchen with all the controlled rage of a hurricane and asks, no, _demands_ , that whoever took Bucky’s toy return it immediately.

“It doesn’t matter _who_ took it. I expect to see it in the living room in the next thirty minutes or so help me _god_ I will personally see to the removal of your genitals. As soon as the toy is on the table this prank war is fucking _done_.”

Even Thor looks ready to wet himself in terror.

The stuffed giraffe is on the table in less than ten minutes and is sitting beside a small box of chocolates. Bucky crushes it to his chest and breathes deeply as he lets the familiar scent wash over him. Steve silently sits down behind him and pulls Bucky into his lap, wrapping him up safe and warm in his arms while Bucky re-orients himself. It ends up being a very bad night for him… until every single one of the Avengers creeps into Bucky’s room to pile onto his bed, each of them holding onto or cuddling close to him.

The next morning is actually far less awkward than anyone could have predicted. Bucky wakes up in increments, taking stock of the time, the temperature, and how many people are in his bed. Rather than being on edge and alert as the Winter Soldier would have been, Bucky is warm and pliant and relaxed. So he falls back asleep for a bit and when he wakes up once more it’s only him and Steve in bed.

And Bucky’s dick is hard enough to crush diamond.

It certainly doesn’t help that Steve is a long line of heat plastered to his front, the blond’s own erection pressing insistently into his hip. Bucky briefly contemplates trying to escape to the bathroom to take care of himself when Steve wakes up and, instead of the horrified shock Bucky had expected, Steve is all sleepy eyes and warm smiles. The pure love and adoration radiating out of Steve’s eyes give Bucky pause, and that’s when he decides, _fuck it_.

He kisses Steve like he might run away, like he’s something not to startle into bolting. Lazy early morning lust shoots through his veins as Steve runs a hand up the side of his neck to cup Bucky’s jaw, deepening the kiss and gently rolling Bucky onto his back. As they kiss they explore each other’s bodies with gentle touches and sweet caresses, careful and welcome and oh so _warm_.

The heat flushes through them under the covers as Steve hooks a finger into the waistband of Bucky’s boxers and, after receiving a nod of assent, slips his hand into his shorts. Bucky gasps as Steve grips him, the roughness of his palm contrasting with the silky smooth skin of his cock, and lets out breathy little noises of pleasure that go straight to Steve’s dick. Bucky gets impatient of the torturous touches and tingling sparks of pleasure, so he yanks Steve’s boxers down just enough to draw his cock out. The super soldier grips them both together in one large hand and strokes deliciously against the sensitive flesh. They move together as one person, sinuously pushing where the other pulls away, creating a smooth rhythm of born from years of trust and love. Bucky’s last thought as he comes is how he could have _ever_ thought that Steve would hate him, the white-hot sparks cresting over his head and drawing Steve down with him to drown in gentle waves of pleasure.

As they come down from their high, Steve gently rubs down Bucky’s back, keeping him grounded and safe from the world.

“You all right there Buck?”

Bucky huffs out a laugh, “Better than alright.”

Steve’s smile is as blinding as the midmorning light seeping through the half-closed blinds, “I guess it’s too early to take you to dinner.”

“I’m pretty sure we’ve been out for dinner enough times over the years to constitute a first date or fifty,” Bucky snarks, affectionate words without bite.

“Still,” murmurs Steve, brows furrowing thoughtfully. “I just want you to be happy. And I wanna be the one to make you happy.”

“Steve,” Bucky reaches up to gently smooth away the frown lines from Steve’s handsome face. “I haven’t been this warm and happy in decades, and it’s because of you. _All_ because of you.”

Steve traces a finger along Bucky’s dog tags, “’Cause I’m with you ‘til the end of the line pal.”

“всегда.”

 _Always_.


End file.
